Google Directors Wanted Page, Brin to Court Facebook Employees

Google considered having its cofounders personally recruit Facebook workers and instituted a policy to make counteroffers within an hour to workers offered jobs by Facebook, according to newly released documents in a closely watched case alleging big tech companies colluded to suppress wages.

Google’s concern about Facebook hiring its employees has been a theme in the case, in which 64,000 tech workers accuse Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe of conspiring not to recruit each other’s tech talent.

The documents posted Friday dramatize how Facebook, which was never part of the no-recruiting pact, disrupted a chummy network among tech giants. Previously released emails showed concern among Google executives beginning around 2007 as Facebook aggressively courted Google employees.

The documents were posted Friday by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, after she considered a motion by Google to have them sealed. Some were posted with redactions.

Both sides have approved a settlement of $324 million, but Koh has yet to approve it. The workers initially sought $3 billion, which could have been tripled under antitrust statutes. Koh questioned the fairness of the settlement in a June hearing. Some class members have rejected the amount and hired lawyers to argue against the settlement.

“Paul/John asked who was reaching out to the target Facebookers,” Prasad Setty, Google’s vice president of compensation, wrote to several Google executives on April 19, 2010. “They suggested that we have Larry/Sergey and Eng execs reach out rather than the Staffing leads.”

A Google security executive urged caution. “I don’t agree that we should be asking Larry and Sergey to reach out to Facebookers,” replied Shannon Deegan, a Google security operations director. “That will quickly be leaked and I believe won’t look great.”

There’s no evidence in the court files that Page or Brin personally recruited Facebook employees.

An earlier leak about Google’s countermoves versus Facebook had caused consternation at Google. In November 2007, a Google engineering manager alerted his bosses that employees were emailing about Google “providing counter-offers within an hour to Googlers who give notice about getting a Facebook offer.”

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt thundered back in an email, “Since I announced our 1 hour policy exactly 24 hours ago we should be embarrassed and disgusted by this leak.”

The newly released documents also show Google staffing employees personally confronted Facebook recruiters about approaching Google employees. A March 2008 email from Google staffing director Arnnon Geshuri states, “Even though it was an open event, we approached the recruiters at the time and … gave them a warning to (sic) we would be watching them.”

Google declined to comment. Intel, Facebook and Doerr could not be reached.